Director Arne Mattsson is most famous for his 1958 thriller "Mannequin in Red" which allegedly was a role-model movie for the giallo that emerged from Italy during the sixties. Being a gigantic fan of gialli, I really wanted to watch "Mannequin in Red" but – alas – I only found this "Mask of Murder" instead. The first thing that becomes quite obvious here is that Mattsson was quite a lazy and patriotic Swede
The events are supposed to take place in a winterly Canadian village, but everyone drives around in Volvo cars with Swedish license places and I'm pretty sure I also spotted a couple of Swedish signposts as well. The only thing missing to make it abundantly clear that filming took place in Sweden is an Ikea warehouse in the background or guest appearances from the ABBA band members! Secondly, I presume this movie is supposed to be a whodunit/mystery thriller, yet the identity of the killer as well as his motivations are pretty obvious straight from the first murder, so all that remains is a goofy giallo-lite flick with the almighty Christopher Lee in yet another inferior supportive role. The police are hunting down a misogynist and masked killer who slices the throats of his female victims with a razor. He's a dumb killer, I may add, because he allows himself to get caught rather easily. During the arrest, Lt. Bob McLaine shoots the suspect much against the will of his superior Chief Lt. Jonathan Rich (Lee) who also gets injured during the conflict. By the way, did you know the Canadian police use machine guns?!? A few days later, Lt. McLaine painfully discovers that his wife Maria lies about going on holiday to Bermuda in order to spend time with her lover – and her husband's colleague – Ray Cooper. Poor Bob emotionally cracks and at the same time the misogynous killer with his hideous mask and razor starts murdering again. Oh gee, I wonder who he is! The regretful thing about "Mask of Murder" is that plot and the denouement hold quite a lot of potential, so in case Arne Mattsson and his crew would have bothered to uphold the mystery and create suspense just a little bit more, this honestly could have been a nice 80s horror sleeper. Now "Mask of Murder" mainly comes across as a lazy effort. Even the killer's mask is an uninspired and ugly piece of scenery in spite of its significant role in the plot. Was it that hard to come up with a slightly more creative mask?
Review of Mask of Murder
